I wouldn't call it successful yet, but it's definitely getting better:

The Revolution of Dignity (Ukrainian: Революція гідності, romanized: Revoliutsiia hidnosti), also known as the Maidan Revolution or the Ukrainian Revolution,[2] took place in Ukraine in February 2014[a] at the end of the Euromaidan protests.[1] Scores of protesters were killed by government forces during clashes in the capital Kyiv. Parliament then voted to remove President Viktor Yanukovych, return to the 2004 Constitution of Ukraine, and call new elections. The revolution prompted Russia to occupy Crimea, starting the Russo-Ukrainian war.[1][2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_of_Dignity

In general hicks that are hard to get to with strong beliefs are really hard to stop. This is true in Rojava and Chiapas where I see them as models of a better world and in Afghanistan where I see them as harbingers of a worse one.

Revolution relies on stopping you either being impossible or not worthwhile. Extremists in difficult terrain that they call home are going to take a long fight where they win most of the battles to actually stop. Meanwhile a slight shift towards something most people want and most of the remainder can live with works because the cost of concession for the soldiers and lower officials is small and the cost of fighting is pissing everyone else off and damaging your population and international reputation while increasing the risk to all government involved people if the revolution succeeds.

The worst case scenario for the average soldier and revolutionary is a civil war type situation where neither side can concede, compromise, or decisively control the majority or where they miscalculate those factors

I said 20 years because of the military knowing so much about every citizen and being incredibly strong.

This is also mostly how modern geopolitics seems to work. Lots of little 'skirmishes' that aren't actual war alongside more traditional diplomacy. The ideal seems to be mostly peace with a touch of violence here and there to keep people on their toes.

The government did raise the retirement age.

Granted, the riots have made this an attractive talking point for candidates for the coming presidential election, but that's about it.

Such riots may look amazingly violent to an outsider, but as a frenchman I don't think we'll get anything nice without going MUCH further than a day of planned (with the police), organised chaos in a designated street of Paris.

Renee Good and the other guy who was executed because he had a gun at a protest. I can't find his name. I want to say Matthew Sweet? He was a nurse I think.

total overthrow of a despot

That was Egypt, right? It takes ten, twenty years at least for a revolution to settle into stable government. How is that going?

gotta make the argument work